Fragility is not usually a characteristic associated with improvised music, but the sounds on this new recording seem at times to be as delicate as fine porcelein. Il Pergolese is a highly original interpretation of works by the 18th Century Italian composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. [...] The nine tracks are inspired by Pergolesi works including the celebrated ‘Stabat Mater’, with Maria Pia De Vito’s rich and warm voice floating exquisitely over the gentle piano chords, the long, yearning cello notes, and the subtle whispers of percussion. One of the most effective tracks is ‘Chi Disse Ca la Femmena’, from Pergolesi’s musical portrait of women, ‘Lo Frate ‘nnamorato’. The theme is stated simply, but then the group doubles the tempo – the effect is almost startling – and De Vito’s voice begins a delightful sequence of punchy scatting over the lively pulse of the instruments. An absorbing album, well worth exploring.John Watson, Jazz Camera

For five minutes or so, this dedication to 18th-century Italian opera and sacred-music composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi sounds like a respectfully operatic and relatively straight tribute to its subject – then Italian drummer Michele Rabbia's muffled-hoofbeat drumming begins to edge in. Though the music regularly returns to Pergolesi's arias and passages from his Stabat Mater (handled by the classically schooled Neopolitan vocalist de Vito with understated aplomb), the early material is used as a jumping-off point for various improvisations – from the unobtrusive melodic twists of French pianist Francois Couturier and German cellist Anja Lechner, to de Vito's whoops, gasps, and scat-like squirmings. Watery sounds and ghostly cello swirls usher in Amen/Fac ut Portem; Sinfonia for Violoncello is a showcase for Lechner; Chi Disse ca la Femmena is given a suitably playful treatment by de Vito at first, before becoming an exciting uptempo chase for cello and voice. [..] both opera and improv listeners may find much to enjoy in it.John Fordham, The Guardian

The musicians participating in this experiment bring together a relatively unconventional set of resources. On the one hand there are pianist François Couturier and cellist Anja Lechner, who have background in performing chamber music together (and recording their performances on ECM New Series). They are joined by percussionist Michele Rabbia, who also controls electronics, primarily in the form of samples of ‘concrete’ sound, and Neapolitan vocalist Maria Pia De Vito, who sings in Neapolitan, rather than the published source text. Much of the music on this album is the product of improvisations by these four musicians. [...] These pieces are decidedly not performances of Pergolesi refracted through a jazzy rhetoric, in the manner, for example, of past efforts by The Swingle Singers. Indeed, they are not so much performances of Pergolesi at all as they are the exploration of fragments of his music through the improvisatory skills provided by each of the performers. One might say that these improvisations allow one to listen to Pergolesi as he might be examined through the auditory version of a kaleidoscope.Stephen Smoliar, Examiner.com